Alexandria, Virginia (CNN) – A few hundred Mormons filed into a chapel just outside the Washington Beltway one recent Sunday to hear a somewhat unusual presentation: an Obama administration official recounting his conversion to Mormonism.

“I have never in my life had a more powerful experience than that spiritual moment when the spirit of Christ testified to me that the Book of Mormon is true,” Larry Echo Hawk told the audience, which stretched back through the spacious sanctuary and into a gymnasium in the rear.

Echo Hawk’s tear-stained testimonial stands out for a couple of reasons: The White House normally doesn’t dispatch senior staff to bare their souls, and Mormons hew heavily Republican. It’s not every day a top Democrat speaks from a pulpit owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And yet the presentation by Echo Hawk, then head of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, is also a perfect symbol of a phenomenon that could culminate in Mitt Romney’s arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next year: The nation’s capital has become a Mormon stronghold, with Latter-day Saints playing a big and growing role in the Washington establishment.

The well-dressed crowd gathered for Echo Hawk’s speech was dotted with examples of inside-the-beltway Mormon power.

In one pew sits a Mormon stake president – a regional Mormon leader – who came to Washington to write speeches for Ronald Reagan and now runs a lobbying firm downtown.

Behind him in the elegant but plain sanctuary – Mormon chapels are designed with an eye toward functionality and economy – is a retired executive secretary of the U.S. Supreme Court.

A few pews further back, the special assistant to the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan sits next to a local Mormon bishop who came to Washington to work for Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and now leads a congressionally chartered foundation.

Mitt Romney, who would be the first Mormon president if elected, is the son of a Cabinet secretary under Richard Nixon.

“In a Republican administration, there will be even more Mormons here,” whispers the bishop, Lewis Larsen, pointing out prominent Washingtonians around the chapel. “Every Republican administration just loads up with them.”

Regardless of which party controls the White House, Mormonism in Washington has been growing for decades.

When Larsen arrived in Washington in the early ’80s, there were a just handful of Mormon meetinghouses in northern Virginia, where he lives. Today, there are more than 25, each housing three separate congregations, or wards, as they’re known in the LDS Church.

“There’s been an absolute explosion in Mormon growth inside the beltway,” Larsen says before slipping out of the pew to crank the air conditioning for the swelling crowd.

The LDS Church says there are 13,000 active members within a 10-mile radius of Washington, though the area’s Mormon temple serves a much larger population – 148,000 Latter-day Saints, stretching from parts of South Carolina to New Jersey.

Signs of the local Mormon population boom transcend the walls of the temple and meetinghouses.

Crystal City, a Virginia neighborhood just across the Potomac River from Washington, has become so popular with young Mormons that it’s known as “Little Provo,” after the Utah city that’s home to church-owned Brigham Young University.

Congress now counts 15 Mormon members, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. That means the 2% of the country that’s Mormon is slightly overrepresented on Capitol Hill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, is the highest-placed elected Mormon in Washington.

Even many Latter-day Saints joke about Washington’s “Mormon mafia” – referring to the number of well-placed LDS Church members across town – though they cringe at the thought of being seen as part of some cabal. (Echo Hawk, for his part, left the Obama administration a few weeks after his chapel presentation for a job in the LDS Church hierarchy).

“No one talks about Washington being an Episcopalian stronghold or a Jewish stronghold,” says Richard Bushman, a Mormon scholar at Columbia University. Talk of “Mormon Washington,” he says, “represents a kind of surprise that people who were thought of as provincial have turned up in sophisticated power positions.”

Bushman and other experts note that, despite Mormons’ growing political power, the official church mostly steers clear of politics. It’s hard to point to federal legislation or a White House initiative that bears distinctly Mormon fingerprints, while it’s easy to do the same for other faiths.

For example, the White House’s recent “compromise” on a rule that would have required religious groups to fund contraception for employees was mostly a reaction to pressure from Roman Catholic bishops.

Nonetheless, Mormon success in Washington is a testament to distinctly Mormon values, shedding light into the heart of one of America’s fastest-growing religions.

And though the official church is mostly apolitical, most rank-and-file Mormons have linked arms with the GOP. Romney’s own political evolution mirrors that trend.

Such forces help explain why Mormons’ beltway power is poised to grow even stronger in coming years, whether or not Romney wins the White House.

‘A ton of Mormon contacts’

For many Washington Mormons, religion plays a key role in explaining why they’re here.

Larsen, who sports a brown comb-over and tortoise shell glasses, arrived in Washington in the early 1980s as an intern for Hatch, also a Mormon.

He landed the internship courtesy of Brigham Young University, his alma mater. The Mormon school owns a four-story dorm on Pennsylvania Avenue, not too far from the White House, which houses 120 student interns each year. It’s the school’s largest such program in the nation.

“Part of our church’s tradition is to be connected with civic life, to make our communities better,” says BYU’s Scott Dunaway, who helps place students on Capitol Hill, at the Smithsonian and other Washington institutions. “We don’t believe in being reclusive.”

It’s a perfect characterization of Larsen. He grew up in Provo, in the shadow of BYU, and wanted to prove he could make it outside of Utah.

“Kids growing up in the LDS Church have been told, ‘Go ye out in the world and preach the gospel of Christ - don’t be afraid to be an example,’ ” Larsen said, sitting in the glass-doored conference room of the foundation he runs on K Street.

“So we are on our missions, converting people to Christianity,” he continued. “And coming to Washington, for me and probably for a lot of people, came out of that interest. We see it as our career, but also we’re going out to preach the word of Christ.”

For Larsen, that usually means correcting misinformation about Mormonism or explaining Mormon beliefs and practices – you really don’t drink coffee, ever? – over lunch with co-workers or at business functions, rather than on-the-job proselytizing.

He learned about integrating work and faith from Hatch. He was initially shocked to discover that the senator prays in his office each morning. Larsen and Hatch developed what the bishop calls a “father-son” relationship, with the intern rising up through the ranks to become Hatch’s chief Washington fundraiser.

“We would go on trips, and I’d quiz him on the plane: Why did the church do this? Why didn’t the church do this?” Larsen said. “He was like a tutor to me.”

Now, as the head of a foundation that educates teachers about the U.S. Constitution, the bishop helps other young Mormons with job leads and introductions. Larsen was appointed to the role by Hatch and the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Much of Washington’s Mormon professional network is still anchored by BYU, which operates a handful of big, well-connected alumni groups with major Washington chapters. The most prominent is BYU’s Management Society, a global organization whose biggest chapter is in Washington.

At the chapter’s recent alumni dinner, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was the guest of honor. She has strong ties to the Mormon community and has hired Mormons as top aides. Says Larsen: “Condi’s got a ton of Mormon contacts.”

Patrice Pederson also knows how to work a Rolodex. A lifelong political activist, she moved from Utah to Washington last year and soon tapped into BYU’s local network.

Pederson served as the U.S.-based campaign manager for Yeah Samake, a Mormon running for president in the West African nation of Mali.

Samake traveled frequently to the U.S. to raise money and build political support, so Pederson enlisted the help of BYU’s Management Society and other groups to host events for the candidate.

Both in Washington and across the U.S., many Mormons are watching his candidacy.

“Members of the church on Capital Hill were anxious to introduce the candidate to other members of Congress,” says Pederson, sipping an herbal tea (Mormons eschew black leaf teas) in a strip mall Starbucks near her apartment in Alexandria, Virginia.

“It’s cool to have a member of the church running for president in Africa.”

Beyond making connections, many Washington Mormons say the LDS Church provides an ideal proving ground for careers here.

Unlike most churches, it has no professional clergy; from the bishop to the organist, each role is filled by everyday Mormons, most of whom have other day jobs. As a result, Mormons take church leadership roles at an early age, speaking publicly at Sunday services almost as soon they learn to talk.

“My kids grew up in the church, and we get together for three hours on Sundays, and each member needs to get up and speak,” says U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. “By the time they graduate, they have all these speaking assignments that other teenagers just don’t have.

“For those who grow up in the Mormon church, they are taught skills that allow them to be successful in a tough city like Washington,” says Chaffetz, who converted to Mormonism shortly after college.

Young Mormons also hone leadership skills by serving missions away from home. The missions last from one and half to two years and happen when Mormons are in their late teens and early 20s and often include intensive foreign language training.

“Young Mormons are more formidable in public settings and international settings than others,” says Terryl Givens, a Mormon scholar at the University of Richmond. “Normally you would have to acquire more age and work experience before you feel comfortable and useful at NGOs and think tanks.”

Chaffetz, whose son is serving a mission in Ghana, says the experience is the perfect preparation for political careers.

“They learn rejection early on,” he says. “If you’re going to be in politics, that’s a pretty good attribute.”

Christina Tomlinson served her mission in nonexotic Fresno, California. But working with the Laotian community there, she acquired the foreign language skills that landed her first internship at the U.S. State Department.

“I look back at that and it’s nothing but divine providence,” Tomlinson says one night at an office building-turned-chapel in Crystal City, after a weekly discussion about Mormon teachings. “I would have never made those choices.”

When she arrived at her foreign service orientation in the late 1990s, Tomlinson was surprised to find that a half-dozen of her State Department colleagues were also Mormon. The thriving LDS community at State even runs its own e-mail list server so Latter-day Saints can find each other wherever in the world they’re stationed.

Like former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, who used the Mandarin language skills acquired through a Mormon mission to Taiwan to help secure his job as President Barack Obama’s previous ambassador to China, Tomlinson leveraged her mission to get ahead at State, where she now serves as special assistant to the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“I’m basically the chief of staff for the president’s representative charged with implementing U.S. foreign policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan,” she e-mailed on a recent plane ride back from the region.

Language skills acquired on a Mormon mission helped Christina Tomlinson get her start at the State Department.

At the point of a bayonet

Like many Mormons, Tomlinson says her professional life is driven by a faith-based patriotism that sounds old-fashioned to modern ears: “I just really wanted to serve my country.”

But that distinctly Mormon patriotism was hard-won. From their very beginning, Mormons had tried to forge a special relationship with Washington. And for decades, they failed.

Joseph Smith, who founded Mormonism in the 1830s, petitioned the U.S. government to protect his fledgling religious community from the violent persecution it was experiencing, even meeting repeatedly with President Martin Van Buren.

But Washington refused, provoking Smith – who Mormons consider their founding prophet – to run for president himself in 1844. He was assassinated by an anti-Mormon mob in Illinois well before Election Day.

In the face of such attacks, Mormons fled west, to the territory that’s now Utah. But they continued to seek ties with Washington, dispatching representatives to the capital to lobby for statehood.

Congress refused to grant it. Instead, Uncle Sam disincorporated the LDS Church and sent the U.S. Army to police Mormon territory.

In the eyes of Washington, Latter-day Saints were flouting federal law by practicing polygamy. The feds saw the LDS Church as an undemocratic rival government that threatened Washington’s power.

Joseph Smith, Mormonism’s founding prophet, ran for president in 1844 but was killed before Election Day.

Mormons would eventually ban polygamy, paving the way for Utah statehood in 1896. But Congress nonetheless refused to seat the new state’s Mormon senator, who also served as a top church official.

For four years, the U.S. Senate held hearings to grill U.S. Sen. Reed Smoot and other church leaders, alleging that Mormons continued to practice polygamy despite promises to the contrary.

“The political trial was as much a galvanizing cultural moment as was Watergate,” says Kathleen Flake, a scholar of Mormonism at Vanderbilt University in Tenneessee.

When Smoot was eventually seated – after the LDS Church took further steps to stamp out polygamy – he managed to become a Washington powerbroker. He would chair the Senate Finance Committee and act as a presidential adviser.

“He was Mr. Republican,” says Flake. “For a while there, he was the Republican Party.”

Smoot’s unflagging pursuit of legitimacy in Washington, despite the city’s bias against him and his faith, symbolizes what many call a uniquely Mormon appreciation for American civic life. It helps explain the Mormon fascination with Washington to this day.

It may seen counterintuitive, but Mormons’ early exposure to persecution at the hands of other Americans – aided, Mormons say, by the U.S. government – wound up strengthening their patriotic streak.

In the face of attacks, Mormons clung to the U.S. Constitution and its unprecedented guarantee of religious freedom. They distinguished between the document and those charged with implementing it.

Mormon scripture goes so far as to describe the U.S. Constitution as divinely inspired, establishing a unique environment in which Mormonism could emerge.

“Mormons are superpatriots,” says Columbia University’s Bushman. “Joseph Smith said that if the government was doing its job as laid out in the Constitution, it would protect Mormons from their enemies.”

Mormons began to shed their Utah-only siege mentality and fanned out in the early part of the 20th century. Their patriotic streak, which translated into military enlistments and applications for government jobs, led many to Washington.

That wave included J. Willard Marriott, the hotel chain founder, who launched his business career by opening an A&W root beer stand here. He would go on to forge the kind of deep political connections that would help make Willard “Mitt” Romney his namesake.

Washington’s Mormon community got another boost in the 1950s when President Dwight Eisenhower appointed a top church official, Ezra Taft Benson, as his agriculture secretary.

“Mormons took it as a sign of maybe, just maybe, we’re being accepted,” says Flake. “It signified a cultural acceptance of Mormonism. People thought Mormons believed weird things, but also that they were self-reliant, moral and good neighbors.”

As Mormons became more accepted, they became more upwardly mobile, landing in parts of the country that could sustain careers in commerce, academia and government - another reason Washington was a big draw.

By the time there were enough Mormons in the eastern U.S. to justify the construction of the first Mormon temple east of the Mississippi River, the church chose a site just outside Washington.

The temple opened in 1974, shortly after another high-profile Mormon – George Romney, Mitt’s father – left his post as Richard Nixon’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

“The Washington temple served as a symbol of the triumphant return of Mormonism to the east,” says Givens, the University of Richmond professor. “Mormons left from the point of a bayonet in the 1800s and the temple is this gigantic symbol that says ‘We’re back – and we’re back in the nation’s capital.’ ”

The Mormon temple outside Washington was the first such temple built east of the Mississippi River.

Unlike Mormon meetinghouses, where members meet for Sunday worship, temples are grander buildings reserved for certain rites, such as proxy baptisms for the dead.

To this day, the first monument many Washington visitors see isn’t a federal landmark. It’s the massive Mormon temple, its Georgian marble towers and gold-leafed spires looming above the trees on the Washington Beltway like an otherworldly castle.

The temple houses a J. Willard Marriott-financed mural of Jesus Christ’s second coming, which features a picture of the Washington temple itself in the background.

“Are you implying that the millennium will begin in Washington?” a temple visitor once asked Marriott, referring to Jesus’ return.

Replied Marriott: “What better place is there?”

Good at organizing

These days, the Mormon impulse toward Washington is often as much political as patriotic.

Patrice Pederson - the campaign manager for the Mormon running for president in Mali - made her first foray into politics at 15, hopping the bus from her home in the suburbs of Salt Lake City into town to intern with a Republican candidate for the U.S. House.

“I remember that when Bill Clinton was elected, I wore all black to school that day,” says Pederson, who was in junior high at the time. “I was mourning the death of liberty.”

Pederson’s activism as a “total hardcore right-winger” continued into her 20s. She put off college at BYU to start a “pro-family” advocacy group aimed at lobbying foreign governments and the United Nations. The work brought her to Washington so frequently that she decided to relocate last year: “I had more friends here than in Utah.”

Pederson’s path to D.C. speaks to the growing Mormon/Republican alliance since the 1960s, driven largely by the emergence of social issues such as abortion and gay marriage and the rise of the Christian Right.

“In the 1950s and ’60s, Utah became Republican,” says Bushman. “It’s partly about being anti-communist, but it’s also a response to the 1960s and the decay of old-fashioned moral virtues. It’s an anti-1960s movement, and the Republicans seemed to be the party of old-fashioned virtues.”

Pederson’s roommate, Kodie Ruzicka, grew up squarely in that movement, with her mom heading the Utah chapter of Eagle Forum, a conservative Christian group founded by rightwing icon Phyllis Schlafly.

In the 1970s, when the Catholic Schlafly led a successful grassroots campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have made gender-based discrimination unconstitutional, she enlisted the help of Mormons.

To its opponents, including the LDS Church, the ERA was the work of radical feminists who wanted to upend traditional gender roles.

Much of Schlafly’s organizing was among evangelicals, and “given the sometimes hostile evangelical line on Mormons, [Schlafly’s] Mormon outreach was kind of revolutionary,” says Ruzicka, who now works at the Justice Department. “But we’re good at organizing, and we have a lot of useful structures for it, so that was useful to her.”

Today, Mormons head Eagle Forum chapters across the West, including California, Arizona and Nevada, as well as Utah.

Bridge-building between Mormons and the conservative movement helps explain the Reagan administration’s push to hire many Mormons into the White House - which further cemented the alliance. That bond continues to lure Mormons to D.C.

Ruzicka, for one, continued in the political footsteps of her mother, arriving in Washington in her mid-20s to lead a nonprofit that promotes safe haven laws, which allow young mothers to legally abandon young children at fire stations.

Beyond hot-button social issues, U.S. Rep. Chaffetz says the Mormon faith engenders support for limited government.

“The church is very adamant about personal responsibility, and for people to voluntarily participate in service,” the Utah Republican says. “There’s this feeling that service is not something that should be mandated by government.”

The LDS Church, for its part, insists it is politically neutral and that it avoids pressuring Mormon elected officials to tow a church line. “The church’s mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, not to elect politicians,” the church’s website says.

Mormon experts say the church’s support for a relatively strict separation of church and state is born of the U.S. government’s refusal to help Mormons in the face of early persecution.

And after being accused of setting up a rival government around the turn of the last century, the church is loath to be seen giving marching orders to LDS politicians.

The church did, however, play a leading role in passing Prop 8, California’s gay marriage ban, in 2008. Church officials called it a moral cause, not a political one.

Plenty of critics disagree. But neither Mormon bishops nor church officials are known to lead the kind of church-based legislative lobbying efforts that Catholic bishops or evangelical leaders do.

Mitt Romney himself embodies the reluctance of Mormon politicians to connect their religion and their public policy positions, in contrast to politicians of other faiths.

That reluctance also appears to be born of anxiety over Americans’ lingering questions and doubts about Mormonism. When Pew asked Americans last year what word they associated with the Mormon faith, the most common response was “cult.”

In recent weeks, Romney’s newfound position as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has produced a mix of excitement and worry among Mormons. That’s especially true in Washington, where politically savvy Latter-day Saints send out frequent e-mail round-ups of Mormon media coverage to their LDS networks.

“A lot of us know it’s ultimately a good thing, but it’s hard to feel like it’s a good thing because so much of the publicity is about things you wouldn’t talk about in polite company, like my underwear,” says Pederson, referring to the enduring fascination with Mormon undergarments.

Like many conservatives, Pederson is suspicious of Romney.

“I don’t like his waffling, to put it gently, on life and family issues,” she says. “But if it comes down to Romney versus Obama, hand me the pom-poms. I’ll be president of the Romney-Is-the-Best-We-Can-Come-Up-With-for-President Club.”

For now, Pederson is working with the National Right to Life Committee’s political action committee to raise money for the Romney effort, even as she makes up her mind about how actively she wants to promote his candidacy.

Some of her calculus is about weighing political reality against her conservative idealism. And some of it is about her next professional move. It’s a very Washington place to be.

soundoff(3,419 Responses)

God did give some other commands after he said go forth and multiply. Unfortunately the mormons were already busy with their daughters.

May 13, 2012 at 12:56 pm |

cwfusto

It's now obvious to everyone on here poor little danman got dumped by a mormon girl/or boy, and now has a grudge to publicly announce.

Anger is like a hot coal you intend to throw at someone, but you are the only one that gets burned. Let the hate go Danny. you'll be happier and less lonely if you do.

May 13, 2012 at 1:03 pm |

Mark Stoddard

Disgusting response. Don't talk about my daughters or anyone's that way. You should be ashamed of yourself.

May 13, 2012 at 4:39 pm |

Danman

At least we know their stance on womens rights. What rights? Oh, the right to pop out a perfect mormon disciple dozen? So they have the right to get pregnant. That's it.

May 13, 2012 at 12:54 pm |

cwfusto

I would have to say, you're about as ignorant as a southern white man in the 30's. Lets say you Mississippi.

May 13, 2012 at 1:01 pm |

Clement Gill

I assume you will be writing similar articles in the coming weeks about the number of Presbyterians, Baptists, Hindus and all other religions who are in government. GET OFF IT. This is not 1928 or 1960.

May 13, 2012 at 12:54 pm |

intel

Does the average American know that Mormons believe they are descended from space travellers? For real? Do some research on your own into the Mormon church. And then tell everyone you know about it. Let's invade Utah and restore democracy.

May 13, 2012 at 12:54 pm |

sybaris

Does the average American know that christians believe they are descended from a couple who where made out of dirt and a rib by some invisible sky daddy?

May 13, 2012 at 12:56 pm |

Dave

Mormons are insane for putting faith where they do. The mental health of anyone who chooses to become or remain Mormon MUST be called into question. Mitt Romney is NOT MENTALLY FIT to run this nation.

May 13, 2012 at 1:00 pm |

Voice of Reason

Their babble is no different than any other religious babble, it's all the same babble.

May 13, 2012 at 1:00 pm |

Dave

Space travelers? Boy that is a new one. I've been a Mormon for a long time and I've never heard that one!

May 14, 2012 at 9:34 am |

DeeCee1000

You all should see all the trashy anti-gay fundies freaking out over Time Magazine's and New Yorker Magazine's newest cover pages over at the trashy Yahoo News website; the popular place for all the lowlifes including the birthers congregate to spew their hatred of our Black POTUS.

May 13, 2012 at 12:51 pm |

DeeCee1000

Correction: Newsweek and The New Yorker magazine covers.

May 13, 2012 at 12:54 pm |

Lily

WOW! Hate much?

May 13, 2012 at 1:05 pm |

DeeCee1000

Lily. . .you probably belong with the trashy Yahoo "News" crowd. I say that in a loving way of course just as my bible says to. I really do you love you, which is why I feel that telling you how trashy you are is the loving thing to do.

May 13, 2012 at 1:10 pm |

John B

So they choose to believe in a space God and choose to have temples modeled after Supermans North Pole residance, who cares right.... Well I do, these parasites are growing in numbers just like the other religion in the Middle East.... It's another form of control my friends... The control of the masses through religion and media will continue as long as the monster is fed... Free thinking does not exist for the masses thus becoming the cattle that we see everyday at work, on TV and even in our families.... The cycle will end but at what cost... I would not want to stick around to find out.... Please before you reply, calm down and think, since most people react then think... Thank you and good luck to the human race because we are fu@kd......

May 13, 2012 at 12:51 pm |

Voice of Reason

Parasites! That's exactly the word I was thinking of! I envisioned myself way above the earth looking down on the US and watching all these little parasites moving from Utah and setting-up a strategic attack bunker. It just plain sickens me!

May 13, 2012 at 12:58 pm |

Mia

John B. -The DC temple you are referring to was actually announced in the late 60's and completed in 1974, years before the first Superman film in 1978. So its more accurate to say that superman's north pole residence was modelled after the Mormon temple.

May 13, 2012 at 4:57 pm |

Danman

I get behind any religion that is hyper-judgemental, believes I should have multiple 14yr old "child brides" and the number of babies my ho's pop out is equall to my status as a planetary GOD on heaven with my own little child-abusing polygamist universe to pop-off in ad infinitum....
Isn't that like getting 72 virgins? I think Mormons are just Insurgent Muslims in disguise....

May 13, 2012 at 12:51 pm |

Dave

I hate to say this but you know very little about the Mormon church.

May 14, 2012 at 9:35 am |

Bob Joe

Thor said he'd banish the frost giants. I don't see any frost giants, so under that logic that all other religions are running on, Thor is god.

May 13, 2012 at 12:50 pm |

on StreetWise

Mormonism is a fitting and perfect marriage of Religion and Politics... His "Beast" is waiting for their "Bride" and the anti-christ will conduct the official ceremony. For many "Christians" will follow the GOP's voice of the "Believers" down the wide road of destruction... LOL!

May 13, 2012 at 12:41 pm |

True

"And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light." 2 Corinth 11:14

May 13, 2012 at 12:43 pm |

Eowyn77

Thanks for the interesting article! I'm Mormon and knew about some of the more prominent LDS figures, but I didn't realize there was a "little Provo" in DC, though with the temple there, it shouldn't have been too much of a surprise.

What is surprising is the rancor in the comments. If you wanted to know what Jews believe, you would talk to a Jewish friend or someone at your local synagogue. You wouldn't go to a Catholic or Muslim or (worse) visit an anti-Semitic website. If you want to know what Mormons believe, talk to a Mormon friend or, lacking that, go to lds.org and find out what the church's own faith claims are. The author of this article clearly did just that – thank you for taking the time to get accurate information!

May 13, 2012 at 12:40 pm |

Voice of Reason

Is it true that you believe that indians are not from asia?

May 13, 2012 at 12:42 pm |

Voice of Reason

Why do you have such gaudy buildings?

May 13, 2012 at 12:44 pm |

Voice of Reason

What's this about some guy finding a couple of gold tablets in the mountains?

In his younger days, he was involved in a scam. http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon430.htm
He was involved with the spiritiam of his day and led people to believe he had access to their dead relatives long before the Moroni plates were alleged to have been found. Mormonism was just his final and only successful attempt.

May 13, 2012 at 12:55 pm |

sybaris

Any religion for that matter is a con/ponzi scheme

May 13, 2012 at 12:59 pm |

JustAThought

The governer of Missouri at the time also issued an extermination order on all Mormons. The government formally attacking a religion. Forgive me if I find the officals of that time to be less than just.

May 13, 2012 at 1:36 pm |

Sam

Mormon Zionists are just one step away from having their own country, which is what their Founders always wanted!

May 13, 2012 at 12:40 pm |

sybaris

THAT'S funny!!

How are they unlike the christianists who already have it?

May 13, 2012 at 1:00 pm |

Dave

Mormons do not want their own country. Give me a break please.

May 14, 2012 at 9:36 am |

Independant Jack

Mormons are cultists and they are not christian,they are a bunch of crazies athat distort the bible and christian teachings.

May 13, 2012 at 12:40 pm |

seedenbetter

Believing sankes talk, woman came from a man's rib, people rise from the dead, that god rped a poor jewish girl who popped out his son/himself, etc. is crazy too.

Christianity is a cult, too. It is a cult that just grew and evolved and became middle class. It is unfair and inaccurate to continue to call Mormonism a cult. It is accurate to say that it's basic catechism is as ridiculous as those of Christianity which spawned it. Called a dead first century Jew a god is silly.

On the other hand, Mormonism DOES capture a certain historical and spiritual energy that was America in the 1800's

May 13, 2012 at 12:58 pm |

sybaris

All religions are cults, it's just a numbers game.

May 13, 2012 at 1:01 pm |

will

sorry jack your an idiot!

May 13, 2012 at 5:27 pm |

Dave

I have studied the Bible for many years and I do not see contradiction between it and the Mormon doctrine. In fact, it is amazing to me when I watch the Christian broadcasts and I see them teach the same exact things we believe. Ironically, they then say we are wrong.

May 14, 2012 at 9:38 am |

Phil

I love watching Christians argue over which brand is the "true" one. It's like arguing over which candy bar will make you fat..

Its all nonsense. It also scares the heck out of me that you guys want to legislate your barbaric morality based on what men wrote in books 2000 years ago.

Billions of people get lost, because they are seduced by false churches, cults and sects and we sit on the couch and operate the remote. Don't let us watch inactively, how the Mormons kill precious souls, loved by God. Every German bricklayer knows that the LDS are a dangerous cult. How can even educated Americans honor them so much? Have the Mormons yet bought the media? We need to undergo some historical education about the origin of the sects and cults and false churches.

Gradually we should say goodbye to the long-held view that politics would be absolutely secular. This was never possible, because the human being by itself is a religious being and administrations are built by (religious) human beings and therefore most be religious as a whole.

I don't dare to decide, if any member of a sect or cult should be allowed to become president of a country of the Western World, which has Christian roots.

Basically I think that all people of a Western country should have the same rights and duties independent from their belief.

However, it becomes dangerous, if a single sect or cult infiltrates the administration of a country. It would be naive not to assume that such people would not try to promote the interests of their own sect or cult, even if they had sworn to seek the benefit of the whole nation.

Frederic the Great, the King of Prussia, promoted freedom of religion, but one should consider that at his time in the 18th century there was a great consensus in Europe that Christianity was the true religion, whereby there was a conflict between Protestants and Catholics. Although Frederic the Great supported religious freedom, he finished the rule of the pope in Europe by fighting the Catholic Habsburgians. Frederic the Great promoted the Englightenment (he was a friend of Voltaire), which was among others the end of the rule of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. Frederic the Great was not anti-Christian (he was a Protestant), but aware that wolves in sheep's clothing always tend to use "their" churches, to gain worldly honor, power and riches.

The problem is that sects, cults and false churches always seek worldly honor, power and riches in contrast to Jesus, who was a meek and humble carpenter, who simply lived a righteous life, which pleases God.

Our basic problem today is that we have lost the ability to discriminate between cults, sects, false churches and the Christian Church.

The Christian Church was founded by Jesus himself and has a history, which is meanwhile 2000 years old. True Christian teachers always try to keep the connection to the Early Church. It is a calamity that today any pizza baker takes the Bible and interpretes it according to the thoughts of his own foolish heart. It is clear that such people have to fail and this is the reason for the many Free Churches, cults and sects, we have got today.

For example, Luther did not simply take the Bible and interpreted it, but he agreed with the Fathers of the Church, whereby he saw the Bible as the most authoritative docu-ment. In fact, through the Fathers of the Church Luther found the right access to the Holy Bible.

My humble self found the right access to the Bible by Bonhoeffer, who himself refered to Luther and the Early Church. Hence, when I tell a doctrine, it is not my lousy invention or interpretation, but the consensus of the whole Church, which is ruled by the Holy Spirit.

Joseph Smith, the founder of LDS, once saw a demon (he regarded it as God), which told him that he was not allowed to cooperate with the currently existing churches. This fact alone is a clear proof that the Mormons must be a cult, because the true Church always keeps the tradition of the Early Church. The mainline churches of today have their roots in the Early Church, because they keep the one holy sacramental baptism, which is not allowed to be repeated. It is only that the mainline churches need a new reform, because they have forgotten that baptism is a divine call for discipleship. Baptism is the gateway to a Christian life, but not a free ticket for heaven. We will only enter heaven, if we live as Chrisitian day by day in the power of the divine call, which is the sacramental baptism, which refers to Christ's sacrifice.

We need a free international council of the Protestant Churches and Orthodox Churches (the pope-rat should not be allowed to participate), in order to outline again the true, good old doctrine, which is teached for 2000 years. It is really possible to assess this doctrine by theological and historical means. Then this doctrine should be teached in the Anglican Church, the German Evangelical Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church, Orthodox Churches, etc..

This would be a great progress for the mankind, if people could certainly know, where they could find health for their soul. It is a calamity that billions of people today are entrapped by lousy cults, sects and false churches and will finally get lost. The soul's health can be found only in the true Church

You're just as nuts as the Mormons. As if one faith's fairy-tales are any different from another.

May 13, 2012 at 1:06 pm |

Dave

If you fully understood Mormon beliefs, you would be surprized at how much they related to and are built on the church Christ established. Study apostasy and restoration, and at least you will know where we are coming from. You don't have to agree, but it would be helpful if the assertions are accurate.

May 14, 2012 at 9:41 am |

n8263

It is immoral to impose your religious superstition on others.

You do not believe in religion because you honestly think it is true, you believe in it because you fear mortality or are seeking meaning in your life. It does not take a genius to figure out all religion is man made, so for humanity's sake, please stop lying to yourself.

Deluding yourself in religion does not change reality. Lying to yourself is probably the worst possible way to try to find meaning.

It's amazing in a country founded on separation of church and state – that when it comes to politics and politicians that's ALL that gets the majority of media attention. Well, unless there is a juicy scandal which involves someone who ranted long and hard publicly for Family Values. I don't understand WHY politicians have to represent themselves as paragons of religious devotion and deep personal piety if not outright getting voice mail from god mandating their bid for office. Does anyone really believe that anyone running for any office is deeply religious in the sense of any other religion than the Church of Self? Pretty sure the prerequisite for aspiring to a life of politics requires only that a person be an accomplished pathological liar.

May 13, 2012 at 12:35 pm |

Atheism is not healthy for children and other living things

Prayer changes things .

May 13, 2012 at 12:34 pm |

Former Wasatcher

It's better than Mormonism - at least it's feasible! Let's at least be honest with our children and let THEM arrive at their own conclusions!

May 13, 2012 at 12:39 pm |

just sayin

Mormons are deceived and lost, so called atheists are deceived and lost. Both are on par neither is better or worse although as a people group,Mormons appear to be nicer. God bless

May 13, 2012 at 12:43 pm |

Former Wasatcher

Most religious people love to spout off about what they believe, but I found (after 20 years living in Utah) that the Mormons WILL NOT discuss their religion with you - I've decided that's either because they don't know the church's dogma OR they DO know and are too embarrassed to admit that they could believe such hogwash! Very odd people, trust me!

May 13, 2012 at 12:34 pm |

Dave

My guess is that they will not discuss it with you since you obviously have your mind made up and seem to be intent on bashing Mormons.

May 14, 2012 at 9:42 am |

O.T.

This is hate journalism. CNN has run numerous articles on Mormonism over the last few months. The subtle undertone here: watch out for these Mormons, there's lots of THEM in Washington. Maybe we shouldn't put one of THEM in the White House. It is using religious bigotry for political purpose and should be condemned.

May 13, 2012 at 12:33 pm |

Former Wasatcher

The Mormons should be condemned. Period. Spend some time in Utah . . . .

May 13, 2012 at 12:36 pm |

Voice of Reason

You have a very odd and telling perspective on the article. I wonder what is your driver for this impression?

May 13, 2012 at 12:36 pm |

True

Would I be considered a bigot or a racist if I warned you about the Nigerian letter scam?

The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.